


A Christmas Carol

by brutti_ma_buoni



Category: Black Books
Genre: Christmas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/pseuds/brutti_ma_buoni
Summary: In which Fran saves Christmas, for... well, Manny. And herself. Just like in the story.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SkyTintedWater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyTintedWater/gifts).



The thing was, Manny could still be surprised. Fran watched his hopeful face, his open smile… the words, “What do you mean, you don’t _do_ Christmas?” falling like sweet, optimistic Haribo from his cheery lips. 

She looked across at Bernard, like a spectator at a tennis match where one of the participants is a puppy and the other an avenging warlord with no time for fluffiness. Bernard inhaled, paused, took a deep swig of homebrewed absinthe to fuel his rage, and said, “I have no time for a festival of compulsory jollification. A bastardised mixture of pagan symbols, Christian pabulum and miscellaneously bolted-on international advertising traditions? A mindless monocultural month of conformist consumerist-“

The thing was, Bernard did own a bookshop. Which, occasionally, contained books Fran wanted to read. She settled down with _Nigella Licks_ for a peaceful half hour on the sofa, and waited till Bernard had wound down. 

When the shop finally went quiet, she stuck a finger in the page for _Electroplated Gingerbread Mufflers in Gin_ and looked up. But the book fell from her fingers at the sight she met. 

“Oh, Bernard,” she couldn’t help but exclaim. “What have you done?”

Manny looked about three feet tall, and seemed to have gone grey. His ill-advised bagful of Christmas decorations, which had sparked the whole tirade, had fallen to the floor and been shredded by the hurricane of Bernard’s righteous ranting. “Poooooor Manny,” Fran protested, going to give the wee figure a cuddle, something she usually avoided with a man that furry. He was up to his knees in ex-tinsel and festoons. “He didn’t deserve that, Bernard.” 

Bernard scoffed. Obviously. You didn’t appeal to Bernard Black with reason and sympathy. Fran settled back on the sofa, read a lovely paragraph about how attractive jars make life more meaningful, and pondered. Usually, Bernard’s callous inhumanity was one of the main things she enjoyed about his company. But she was also a big fan of mulled wine, candles, brandy, evergreens, Baileys on ice, free crap from relatives, drinking at breakfast time, and all the other wonders of the festive season. Lacking an invitation to a more domesticated friend or family this year (as usual), she was either going to have to skip all the good stuff (maybe not the brandy) or make this the year when Bernard finally got with the Christmas spirit. 

Luckily, Fran was a cunning and resourceful woman. She had a plan. She read a recipe for bedazzled trout, checked through the plan for flaws, and deemed it flawless. She shut the book, kissed Nigella for luck (gorgeous, gorgeous Nigella, who wouldn’t want her on their side?), and exclaimed dramatically, “MANNY! You’re SHRINKING!”

Manny hadn’t moved much during Fran’s detailed planning session, though he had morosely kicked some of the shredded jollification around. He still looked plausibly deflated, but also confused. “Am I?” 

Luckily, Bernard would never notice Manny’s confusion. It was one of the most useful things about using a naïve homunculus as a sidekick. “Yes, yes you are,” Fran said, loudly, looming as large over Manny as she could manage. Luckily, she was wearing _very_ good heels, which neither of the boys ever noticed, so Manny would probably believe her. “You’ve lost your Christmas spirit.” 

Bernard scoffed behind her. Manny said, dolefully, “Well, that’s true.” He put just enough wobble into the words that Fran could work with his cue. (Maybe Manny was finally learning something about emotional manipulation after all these years? No, surely not…)

“Yes,” she said, clasping Manny dramatically to her bosom. (Quite a small bosom, honestly, Fran was fairly sure he bruised his nose on her sternum. Again, she could put the injury to good purpose. It made him look even smaller and more injured.) “Bernard, you’ve _killed_ Manny!”

“Bollocks, I have,” he responded, unhelpfully.

The thing with Bernard was, he could only maintain rage at a finite number of things. Lots of things, admittedly, substantially more than your average well-adjusted human. But it took up a lot of his brain space. Leaving space for other things that Fran liked to think of as Creativity Gaps. Or what others might have termed “frightening gullibility spots”. Whatever, they were useful. She set about creating one, in the face of Bernard’s scepticism.

“Yes, look! Look how small he is. He’s got the misery shrinkage already. And-“ Theatrical gasp of horror time. Fran almost did the old hand-to-brow swoon, but decided to save it for later. “-He’s already bleeding from the nose!”

“That’s cos-“ said Manny, before Fran could get a (warm, sympathetic) hand over his mouth. But he got no further. Fran had exposition to invent in the cause of Christmas booze, and no depressed hobbit was going to get in her way.

“You know how we’re all fuelled by something?” she said. “Something that lightens up our lives, that makes it possible to get out of bed on dark, dark days?”

“Sure,” Bernard answered. “Yours is alcohol.”

Well. Yes. Fran chose to skate over that one. Although, “And yours is venomous hatred of humanity, yes. But Manny’s is optimism. That belief that there’s good in everyone. That beneath a curmudgeonly exterior lurks a heart of- Bernard, are you okay?”

“Sorry. Thought I was going to hurl for a second,” he replied. Discouraging. Time to go for the jugular. 

“Christmas is a vulnerable time of year, Bernard. If we leave it untreated, Manny’s optimism could shrivel and die! _Look at him_.” 

Fran had had her hand over Manny’s mouth throughout this, so it probably wasn’t that surprising he looked a tad green when she released him. And the nosebleed had a nicely consumptive look. She glared at Bernard. “This is what you did, Bernard Black. And if he dies-“

She tried to think what would upset Bernard most. Spoilt for choice, but she went with, “You’ll have to fetch things from the airing cupboard _alone_.” 

There was a small pause after her words, during which a slight, but perceptible, _skittering_ scritched down from upstairs. Good timing, Thing in the Cupboard, Fran thought, sending a discreet thumbs-up ceilingwards. 

Bernard said, so quickly that a person unfamiliar with the sound of Bernard Black caving on a point of principle might have missed it, “Okaysowhatdoweneedtodotosavehim?”

And that, oh Best Beloved, is how Fran Katzenjammer spent her best Christmas ever, at least since she started having to pay for it and help with the washing up. There were pies, and crackers, mistletoe, holly _and_ ivy, tinsel, an angel on top of the tree, clementines, bowls of nuts in their shells (which, in the absence of any nutcrackers or anyone caring very much, remained in corners of the shop till 2023, and fostered a whole new squirrel colony in the end), boxes of Quality Street, the Queen’s Speech (probably, Fran couldn’t hear it very well over the grinding of Bernard’s teeth), the Snowman, carol singing round the laptop, and as much Christmas dinner as a frantic mud-wrestle in Morrison’s at 5.49pm on Christmas Eve could wrangle. 

And it had Manny, pink and optimistic about life, the universe and Bernard Black once more, reading his favourite bits of A Christmas Carol. “God bless us, every one,” he chirruped, merrily, and closed the book when he was done. “You know, I think there’s a lesson in this book. One we can all learn from. Don’t you agree, Bernard?”

There was a renewed grinding noise which almost drowned out the skittering from upstairs. “Ys,” said Bernard, eventually. It was the shortest affirmative ever spoken, and seemed to come with a spattering of enamel. 

Bernard Black spent the new year having extensive dental work and anaesthetising himself with the leftover Christmas brandy. But Fran agreed with herself it was worth it.


End file.
